


hold me tight and i'll sink in

by epeolotry



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 20:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epeolotry/pseuds/epeolotry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His constant presence is comforting. To know that someone is with you, without having to acknowledge it – it distracts from the phantom space left beside her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold me tight and i'll sink in

The morning after Pietro is gone, she knows she will never get used to the feeling.

 

She had lost her parents at an age where the haze of time and merciful childhood memory obscured the sharpest pains. And she had still had him. Him to curl into, him to hold onto, when everything else was unsure. Ironically, Pietro, he who had always flitted from place to place, roving and restless, had always been her constant, the star that guided her moonlit travels. 

But now that star, in a brilliant burst of light and stupid, brave heroics, was suddenly extinguished. And she was left stranded, with no guide through the darkness, no point of reference – dead in the water.

 

 

They let her stay, more than that, they offer to train her, as a would-be Avenger. She could do little else but mumble a few grateful words, determinedly avoiding Clint’s gaze, prickling under the watch of his pale, doleful eyes. Eyes that held implicit apology.

 

They both know it would mean nothing.

 

 

She’s not sure what drives her to isolate herself from the rest of the ‘recruits,’ if it’s the guilt she heaps upon her shoulders, their own heavy weighing judgment and hesitancy to truly trust her, or if it’s simply their sheer ostracizing _Americanness_.

Whatever the cause, she would be more alone than ever, were it not for her shade.

 

When she looks up, from her training, from her untouched plate of food, from the melancholic reverie she has fallen into, he is far enough not to be stifling, and yet always within reach, always meeting her dulled gaze with wide, gleaming eyes. As she idly walks the halls, she can feel his piercing stare upon the small of her back and hear the imperceptible mechanical whir as he glides mere yards behind her. If anything, his presence is comforting. To know that someone is with you, without having to _say_ it – it distracts from the phantom place left beside her.

 

He seems to gravitate towards her, and for her, it’s not too baffling a concept to grasp – they are both outsiders, rendered by grim choice or by simple fate.

And like two aimless satellites, they orbit each other.

 

Even when Pietro’s presence was warm beside her, she had forayed beyond it to feel and know his thoughts, a childlike curiosity manifest. A childlike curiosity, it seemed, now mirrored in him.

 

 _It’s fitting_ , she thinks to herself, her knees tucked to her chest as she watches him practice his hand-to-hand combat with the Widow, all his slow, graceful dodges and almost merciful responsive strikes. When Natasha wipes the sweat from her brow, he turns his head in one smooth motion to look back at her and she immediately drops her gaze, cheeks burning.

  

 _We are still both children, after all_.

 

 

One evening, again ‘alone’ in the halls, she finally breaks a weeks long silence. The words, though measured and steady, almost trip over her lead tongue.

 

“Why don’t you come walk beside me?” she asks, not turning, her fingers loosening out of the fists she’d been clenching them into without realizing.

He glides forward in reply, cape billowing behind him.

 

“I did not want to disturb you,” he says in his slow, lilting speech, the words briefly echoing, “It seemed you had…much on your mind.”

Wanda laughs lowly, and it’s a sound hoarse from disuse. The android’s lips almost perk in welcome response to its appearance.

 

“Don’t forget that _I_ am the one who can read men’s minds, Vision,” she looks to him, the ghost of a smile still lingering on her features.

 

“It does not take a mind reading to tell that you are troubled, Miss Maximoff.”

 

His clear eyes almost become clouded with concern, and she forgets that he is not human – it is so easy to forget with eyes like those and arms like his, that had lifted her from certain death, cradled her to his cool chest, protecting her when they were both buffeted by the icy winds.

She turns her gaze from him back to the ground and starts to say something before stopping herself abruptly. There is no way to describe it, to be wrenched away from the other half of a whole, to wake up every morning knowing that she walks the earth that Pietro lies under.

Eventually, words come to her.

 

“I miss him,” she says simply, her consonants trembling and thick with emotion, “More than I can bear.”

He knows not to say anything, watching her bowed head patiently with a furrowed brow.

 

Despite being weeks old, he knows more than he lets on.

 

Which is why when she reaches out a tentative hand, he takes it, interlacing his fingers within hers with supreme care.

 

He holds it like a tender privilege, and she, like a weary traveler, needing something to lean on.


End file.
